What He Left Behind

Nine

When I wake the next morning, Charlie is still sound asleep next to me. His hair is messy and covering his face, so I gently push it out of the way, revealing his soft angelic features. It's one extreme to the other with Charlie. Everything he does is at a hundred miles an hour. He's like this whirlwind of trouble and madness that leaves a path of destruction everywhere he goes. And then all of a sudden he's out like a light, fast asleep and at peace and it's the only time anyone gets a break from the chaos.

I try to play back the previous night's events one by one. Of course, my brain has other ideas and without warning I am inundated with not just recollections of last night's sickeningly familiar events, but the memories of the one person I'm unable to forget. The grief washes over me like a wave and it's powerful and relentless. It makes me want to go back to sleep but I know I mustn't keep letting it consume me. I have to keep going.

I could blame Charlie for triggering it all, but there's not much use in that. It's not like I can get through the day without thinking about Austin anyway. Charlie's only brought forward the inevitable. Besides, I can't hold sober Charlie responsible for drunken Charlie's actions, despite many people thinking on the contrary.

I don't know everything Charlie's been through. I don't know his reasons for taking drugs so who am I to judge whether it's understandable or not? Maybe he's like Austin; maybe drugs are his last resort when he has no one to turn to. It's all too easy for people with loving families and perfect upbringings and strong support systems to stereotype addicts as anti-social thugs, as if they know what it's like to be so alone they feel they have no choice but to turn to drugs.

It was the same with Austin. Austin would go on a self-destructive bender and then rely on me to bail him out. He could be a dick when he was intoxicated, but I knew he couldn't control it.

Austin was, and still is, the kindest person I've ever known. He'd do anything and everything to make other people happy. I guess you could say that was his hamartia. He spent so much time figuring out how to make everyone else happy that he never had time to do what made him happy.

Every day of Austin's short life, all he ever did was strive to be what other people wanted him to be. He excelled academically because that's what our parents wanted him to do. He behaved in class because that's what his teachers wanted him to do. He spent all his free time going stupidly out of his way for other people because that's what his 'friends' wanted him to do.

He'd stop at nothing to make other people happy, all without asking for anything in return. But then he got ill and all those people he'd tried so hard to make happy buried their heads in the sand and left him alone. The boy that was destined for Harvard became just another waste of talent.

I snap back to the present moment when I feel Charlie shift beside me. Normally I'd probably find him attractive when he's all sleepy and dishevelled, but today I just feel empty. He looks like a stranger. He looks like someone I don't know how to help.

"How are you feeling?" I ask him once I remember how to speak again.

"I've been worse," he murmurs, hauling himself into a sitting position, "How the fuck did I get here?"

"You turned up on my doorstep off your face and shouting the odds, that's how," I say bitterly, slipping so easily back into my cold angry façade. "You also called me a bitch and said you'd hit me if I wasn't a girl, then proceeded to ask if you could stay here."

"Oh." He presses his lips together and his shoulders fall and his eyes fill with guilt. "I'm so sorry," he exhales, and I can see genuine shame in his eyes, just like I used to see in Austin's. "I'm really sorry Noelle. I'm an ass when I'm like that."